Consumers who don’t want to sign up for dozens of cable channels already have range of a-la carte options, from Netflix to Hulu to old-fashioned broadcast antennae, to watch their favorite shows. What they didn’t have, until now, was a way to see live sports carried on cable behemoth ESPN without opting for the full cable package.

Satellite TV provider Dish on Monday unveiled a $20-a-month service, called Sling TV, that offers to beam ESPN (along with TNT, CNN and a mini-package of channels) to internet-connected devices. Those devices, Dish says, will range from laptops to tablets, internet-enabled TVs made by Samsung and LG, as well as Xbox and Amazon.com’s Fire.

Dish has a press release on the matter, and the folks at Xbox weighed in to note Xbox users can get a free month-long trial of the service.

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Welcome to Microsoft Pri0: That's Microspeak for top priority, and that's the news and observations you'll find here from Seattle Times technology reporter Matt Day. Send tips or comments to mday@seattletimes.com.